moodle-php-apache: A Moodle PHP Environment

A Moodle PHP environment configured for Moodle development based on Official PHP Images.

Versions

PHP Version	Variant	Tags	Status	Notes
PHP 8.4	Bookworm	dev
PHP 8.4	Bookworm	8.4, 8.4-bookworm
PHP 8.3	Bookworm	8.3, 8.3-bookworm
PHP 8.2	Bookworm	8.2, 8.2-bookworm
PHP 8.1	Bookworm	8.1, 8.1-bookworm
PHP 8.4	Bullseye	8.4-bullseye
PHP 8.3	Bullseye	8.3-bullseye
PHP 8.2	Bullseye	8.2-bullseye
PHP 8.1	Bullseye	8.1-bullseye
PHP 8.0	Bullseye	8.0, 8.0-bullseye		PHP 8.0 EOL
PHP 7.4	Bullseye	7.4, 7.4-bullseye		PHP 7.4 EOL
PHP 8.2	Buster	8.2-buster		Buster EOL. Not updated since 8.2.7, June 2023
PHP 8.1	Buster	8.1-buster		Buster EOL. Not updated since 8.1.20, June 2023
PHP 8.0	Buster	8.0-buster		Buster and PHP 8.0 EOL
PHP 7.4	Buster	7.4-buster		Buster and PHP 7.4 EOL
PHP 7.3	Buster	7.3, 7.3-buster		Buster and PHP 7.3 EOL
PHP 7.2	Buster	7.2, 7.2-buster		Buster and PHP 7.2 EOL
PHP 7.1	Buster	7.1, 7.1-buster		Buster and PHP 7.1 EOL
PHP 7.3	Stretch	7.3-stretch		Stretch and PHP 7.3 EOL
PHP 7.2	Stretch	7.2-stretch		Stretch and PHP 7.2 EOL
PHP 7.1	Stretch	7.1-stretch		Stretch and PHP 7.1 EOL
PHP 7.0	Stretch	7.0, 7.0-stretch		Stretch and PHP 7.0 EOL
PHP 5.6	Stretch	5.6, 5.6-stretch		Stretch and PHP 5.6 EOL
PHP 7.1	Jessie	7.1-jessie		Jessie and PHP 7.1 EOL
PHP 7.0	Jessie	7.0-jessie		Jessie and PHP 7.0 EOL
PHP 5.6	Jessie	5.6-jessie		Jessie and PHP 5.6 EOL

Example usage

The following command will expose the current working directory on port 8080:

$ docker run --name web0 -p 8080:80  -v $PWD:/var/www/html moodlehq/moodle-php-apache:8.3

Features

• Preconfigured with all php extensions required for Moodle development and all database drivers
• Serves content from /var/www/html or /var/www/html/public (for Moodle 5.1 onwards) by default.
• Document root can be overridden
• For PHP 7.3 and up, both linux/amd64 and linux/arm64 images are being built. Note that linux/arm64 doesn't support the sqlsrv and oci extensions yet. Other than that, both architectures work exactly the same.
• Verified by automated tests.
• Autobuilt from GHA, on push.
• Support for entrypoint scripts and PHP Configuration
• Many common extensions available
• Note that PHP 8.4 images do not include oci extensions as these are no longer supported by Moodle 5.0 onwards.

Configuration

Apache Configuration

This image makes use of the Apache HTTPD server to serve all content. It requires minimal manual configuration.

The Apache DocumentRoot directive can be configured using the APACHE_DOCUMENT_ROOT environment variable, for example:

docker run \
    --name web0 \
    -p 8080:80 \
    -v $PWD/moodle:/srv/moodle
    -e APACHE_DOCUMENT_ROOT=/srv/moodle \
    moodle-php-apache:latest

Note: Specifying a DocumentRoot will override the default root, and will prevent the ability for the image to automatically configure any Moodle-specific configuration.

PHP Configuration

As a lightweight alternative to a full PHP configuration file, you can specify a set of prefixed environment variables when starting your container with these variables turned into ini-format configuration.

Any environment variable whose name is prefixed with PHP_INI- will have the prefix removed, and will be added to a new ini file before the main command starts.

docker run \
    --name web0 \
    -p 8080:80 \
    -v $PWD/moodle:/var/www/html
    -e PHP_INI-upload_max_filesize=200M \
    -e PHP_INI-post_max_size=210M \
    moodle-php-apache:latest

Directories

To facilitate testing and easy setup the following directories are created and owned by www-data by default:

• /var/www/moodledata
• /var/www/phpunitdata
• /var/www/behatdata
• /var/www/behatfaildumps

Initialisation scripts

This image supports custom initialisation scripts using the the docker-entrypoint.d directory. These may be in the following formats:

• a non-executable .sh script, which will be sourced and alter the current context;
• an executable .sh script, which will be executed in the current context;
• a .ini file. which will be copied into the PHP Configuration directory (/usr/local/etc/php/conf.d.)

The following scripts are included as standard:

• 10-wwwroot.sh - a non-executable script used to guess the APACHE_DOCUMENT_ROOT if one is not provided.

These scripts cannot be removed, but may be disabled by creating a file with a matching file name in your own docker-entrypoint.d location.

Other scripts may also be provided, for example, to configure PHP to support a higher upload_max_filesize option you might add the following to a config/10-uploads.ini file:

; Specify a max filesize of 200M for uploads.
upload_max_filesize = 200M
post_max_size = 210M

When starting your container you could do so passing in the config directory:

docker run \
    --name web0 \
    -p 8080:80 \
    -v $PWD/moodle:/var/www/html
    -v $PWD/config:/docker-entrypoint.d \
    moodle-php-apache:latest

These initialization files will be executed in sorted name order as defined by the current locale, which defaults to en_US.utf8.

Extensions

The following extensions are included as standard:

• apcu
• exif
• gd
• igbinary
• intl
• ldap
• memcached
• mysqli
• oci8
• opcache
• pcov
• pgsql
• redis
• soap
• solr
• sqlsrv
• timezonedb
• uuid
• xdebug
• xhprof
• xsl
• zip

All of the above extensions are enabled by default, except for:

• pcov
• xdebug
• xhprof

Enabling optional extensions

Several extensions are installed, but not enabled. You can enable them easily.

xdebug

The xdebug extension can be enabled by specifying the following environment variable when starting the container:

PHP_EXTENSION_xdebug=1

xhprof

The xdebug extension can be enabled by specifying the following environment variable when starting the container:

PHP_EXTENSION_xhprof=1

pcov

The pcov extension is typically not used in the web UI, but is widely used for code coverage generation in unit testing.

It can be enabled by specifying the following environment variable when starting the container:

PHP_INI-pcov.enabled=1

See also

This container is part of a set of containers for Moodle development, see also:

• moodle-docker a docker-composer based set of tools to get Moodle development running with zero configuration
• moodle-db-mssql Microsoft SQL Server for Linux configured for Moodle development
• moodle-db-oracle Oracle XE configured for Moodle development